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LSAT Reading Comprehension study materials
LSAT Reading Comprehension study resources

LSAT Reading Comprehension practice questions

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Question 1Main idea or primary purpose

Passage: Urban beekeeping is widely praised as an environmental good. But released honeybees compete with wild pollinators for limited flowers, so the practice may harm the ecosystems its advocates hope to help. The main point of the passage is that urban beekeeping:

  1. has already eliminated most wild pollinators from cities
  2. should be regulated by local governments
  3. may harm ecosystems despite its green reputation Correct answer.
  4. is more popular in cities than in rural areas

Explanation

The correct answer must state the passage's central claim rather than a detail or an inference it never draws. The passage contrasts beekeeping's reputation with a specific ecological cost, so the main point is that it may damage ecosystems even though it is promoted as beneficial.

Question 2Main idea or primary purpose

Passage: The novelist's later books abandoned the tight plotting of her early work. Critics who call this decline miss the point: the looseness lets her render memory as it actually works. The primary purpose of the passage is to:

  1. defend a stylistic change against critics Correct answer.
  2. compare the techniques of two novelists
  3. describe the novelist's early career
  4. summarize the plot of a novel

Explanation

A primary-purpose question asks what the author is doing, not merely what the passage is about. Here the author disputes the critics' verdict by explaining the rationale behind a stylistic shift, so the purpose is to defend that change.

Question 3Main idea or primary purpose

Passage: Coral polyps host algae that supply them with nutrients and color. When water warms, the algae depart, leaving white skeletons. Reefs recover if temperatures fall quickly, but repeated bleaching is fatal. The passage is primarily concerned with:

  1. describing the process and limits of coral bleaching Correct answer.
  2. explaining how algae color coral polyps
  3. comparing tropical and cold-water reefs
  4. arguing that coral reefs are doomed

Explanation

For an explanatory passage, the main idea is the phenomenon and its mechanism, not a verdict the author never reaches. The passage describes how bleaching occurs and when reefs can recover without claiming that reefs are doomed.

Question 4Main idea or primary purpose

Passage: The biography is exhaustively researched and scrupulously fair. Yet it never asks why its subject mattered, so the reader finishes knowing everything about the man except his significance. The primary purpose of the passage is to:

  1. recommend the biography to specialists
  2. praise the wing's architecture and lighting
  3. criticize a biography for lacking interpretation Correct answer.
  4. summarize the subject's achievements

Explanation

The main idea must accommodate the passage's pivot, marked by 'Yet,' which introduces the author's real point. The praise of research and fairness is conceded so that the complaint about missing interpretation can land.

Question 5Main idea or primary purpose

Passage: Companies tout remote work as a productivity boon, and studies show output holding steady. What the studies miss is that new hires learn far less when no colleague sits nearby - a cost that surfaces years later. The main point is that remote work:

  1. is popular with employees
  2. raises output in the short run
  3. may impair the development of new employees Correct answer.
  4. has been studied extensively

Explanation

The main point lies after the concession: the passage grants that output holds steady in order to stress a hidden long-term cost. An answer that stops at the conceded point states a supporting detail rather than the main idea.

Question 6Main idea or primary purpose

Passage: Historians long held that the plague shattered medieval farming. Estate records now tell a different story: many manors adapted within a decade. The old picture, it seems, generalizes from the worst-hit regions. The main point is that:

  1. the plague had no effect on medieval agriculture
  2. the traditional account overgeneralizes from atypical cases Correct answer.
  3. estate records are unreliable sources
  4. medieval farming collapsed after the plague

Explanation

The main idea of a revisionist passage is the correction it offers, including an account of how the older view went wrong. The passage says the traditional picture generalizes from the worst-hit regions, not that the plague was harmless.

Question 7Main idea or primary purpose

Passage: Economists broadly agree that minimum-wage increases reduce employment among low-skilled workers. The evidence is thinner than the consensus implies: most studies examine small increases in strong labor markets, and few track workers for long. The primary purpose is to:

  1. question whether the evidence behind a consensus is adequate Correct answer.
  2. review the history of minimum-wage laws
  3. propose a specific wage policy
  4. explain how labor markets clear

Explanation

When an author grants a consensus but challenges its foundations, the purpose is to test the adequacy of the supporting evidence. The passage catalogs gaps in the studies rather than recommending any wage level.

Question 8Main idea or primary purpose

Passage: The vaccine's trials were small and its protection faded within a year. None of that mattered much: in the outbreak that followed, regions using it saw cases halve while others saw them double. The main point is that:

  1. the trials were poorly designed
  2. the vaccine should not have been approved
  3. the vaccine's flaws were outweighed by its results Correct answer.
  4. case counts are an unreliable measure of protection

Explanation

A concessive opening signals that the author's point sits in the main clause that follows. The limitations are acknowledged in order to be dismissed in light of the outbreak data, so the main point weighs flaws against demonstrated benefit.

Question 9Main idea or primary purpose

Passage: Cities keep widening highways to ease congestion, and traffic keeps growing to fill the new lanes. Pricing road use at peak hours is unpopular, but it is the only remedy that does not simply invite more driving. The primary purpose is to:

  1. explain drivers' preferences
  2. describe how highways are built
  3. compare two cities' traffic policies
  4. argue for pricing road use at peak hours Correct answer.

Explanation

A passage that rejects current practice and names an alternative is generally aimed at recommending that alternative. Widening highways and driver behavior are described as the problem the recommendation would solve.

Question 10Main idea or primary purpose

Passage: By tracing the trade in guano from Peruvian islands to European fields, the book shows how a single fertilizer remade both agriculture and empire. The primary purpose of the book described is to:

  1. narrate the author's research travels
  2. catalog the chemical properties of fertilizers
  3. trace a commodity to reveal broad historical change Correct answer.
  4. compare European and Peruvian farming methods

Explanation

Purpose answers emphasize the author's aim rather than the subject matter used to reach it. Tracing the commodity is the method; showing how it reshaped agriculture and empire is the aim, so the purpose statement must include that larger claim.

Question 11Main idea or primary purpose

Passage: We assume memory works like a camera, storing faithful copies. In fact each recall rewrites the trace; a story told often enough becomes a memory of the telling. The primary purpose is to:

  1. describe the physiology of the brain
  2. argue that eyewitness testimony is unreliable
  3. compare human and animal memory
  4. correct a common misconception about how memory works Correct answer.

Explanation

A passage that sets up a familiar belief with 'we assume' and then overturns it is aimed at correcting that belief. The detail about retelling supplies the mechanism for the correction.

Question 12Main idea or primary purpose

Passage: Why did the megafauna vanish? Some blame human hunters arriving with sharp new tools; others point to a warming climate that shrank the grasslands. Improved dating favors the hunters, but the debate continues. The primary purpose is to:

  1. prove that hunting caused the extinctions
  2. describe the grasslands of the ice age
  3. present rival explanations without settling between them Correct answer.
  4. date the arrival of humans in the Americas

Explanation

Where an author reports a live dispute and closes by noting that it continues, the purpose is to lay out competing explanations rather than endorse one. The remark that dating merely favors one side rules out a claim that the question is resolved.

Question 13Main idea or primary purpose

Passage: The telegraph is often called the Victorian internet. The label flatters it: the telegraph was slower, costlier, and reached few. Its real effect was on markets, which began to move in step across continents. The primary purpose is to:

  1. compare two technologies in detail
  2. explain how markets set prices
  3. qualify a comparison and name a deeper effect Correct answer.
  4. enumerate the technical limitations of the telegraph

Explanation

The author both limits a popular analogy and redirects attention to the effect that actually matters, so the purpose must include that redirection. A purpose statement that stops at the critique misses the final sentence.

Question 14Main idea or primary purpose

Passage: The museum's new wing is handsome and its galleries are generous. But it displays the collection as a series of isolated masterpieces, stripping away the workshops, patrons, and trade that produced them. The primary purpose is to:

  1. fault the wing for isolating works from context Correct answer.
  2. survey the history of art collecting
  3. praise the architects' handling of space
  4. describe the museum's acquisition policy

Explanation

The clause after 'But' carries the author's point, and that point is a criticism of how works are displayed. Praise of the architecture and mention of workshops and patrons set up the criticism rather than state it.

Question 15Main idea or primary purpose

Passage: Plants release volatile compounds when damaged, and neighboring plants appear to respond by boosting their own defenses in advance. Whether this is communication or mere chemistry is disputed, but the effect is measurable. The main point is that:

  1. volatile compounds are toxic to most insects
  2. plants possess a rudimentary nervous system
  3. damaged plants seem to prompt defenses in nearby plants Correct answer.
  4. the dispute about plant communication has been resolved

Explanation

The main idea must be pitched at the level of confidence the passage supports, which here is an apparent effect rather than a proven mechanism. The passage explicitly leaves open whether the response is communication or chemistry.

Question 16Main idea or primary purpose

Passage: The report congratulates the agency on 'record efficiency.' It does not mention that the agency now counts only the applications it finishes, and that it finishes fewer every year. The main point is that:

  1. applications have grown more complex in recent years
  2. the praise rests on a measure that hides declining output Correct answer.
  3. the agency has become more efficient by every available measure
  4. efficiency cannot be measured in public agencies

Explanation

The main point exposes the gap between a quoted claim and the statistic behind it. The author never denies that a metric exists; the objection is that the chosen metric conceals a decline.

Question 17Main idea or primary purpose

Passage: Funding for basic research rarely yields quick commercial returns, and critics of such spending are right about that. But the returns that do come - satellites, gene editing - arrive decades later and dwarf the outlay. The main point is that:

  1. critics of research funding overlook its long-run value Correct answer.
  2. commercial returns from research are immediate
  3. basic research should be funded by private firms
  4. federal spending on basic science has largely been wasteful

Explanation

The author concedes the critics' narrow claim and then answers it with a larger one, so the main point is that the critics miss the long-run payoff. An opening concession in such a passage is meant to be outweighed, not to be the point.

Question 18Main idea or primary purpose

Passage: The novel never tells us whether its narrator is guilty. That is not evasion: forced to weigh the same fragmentary evidence, the reader ends up judging as the characters do, on insufficient grounds. The primary purpose is to:

  1. explain why the novel's ambiguity serves its design Correct answer.
  2. assess the narrator's legal guilt
  3. complain that the novel withholds information
  4. summarize the novel's plot and characters

Explanation

The passage names an apparent flaw and then explains why it is deliberate, so the purpose is to justify the technique. Reading it as complaint would make the author's rebuttal ('not evasion') pointless.

Question 19Main idea or primary purpose

Passage: Two schools of archaeology disagree about the first Americans. The coastal route is faster and fits the genetic dates; the inland route explains the tool styles. Neither accounts for all the evidence. The main point is that:

  1. both models fit some evidence, so neither is established Correct answer.
  2. the coastal route has been confirmed by genetic and archaeological evidence
  3. the genetic evidence alone is decisive
  4. neither model is likely to be correct in the end

Explanation

A balanced description of two models, each accounting for part of the evidence, yields a main point about the unsettled state of the question. Because the author says neither fits everything, an answer that crowns a winner overstates the passage.

Question 20Information that is explicitly stated

The lighthouse at Cape Alwen was automated in 1987. Before then, three keepers lived on site year-round, rotating shifts so that one was always awake. The last keeper, Mara Oyelaran, stayed on for two years after automation to maintain the fog signal, which was not converted until 1989. According to the passage, what happened in 1989?

  1. Oyelaran left the service.
  2. Three keepers were hired.
  3. The fog signal was converted. Correct answer.
  4. The lighthouse was automated.

Explanation

Explicit-detail questions ask only what the passage states outright, so the year must be matched to the event attached to it in the text. The passage ties 1989 to the conversion of the fog signal and to nothing else.

Question 21Information that is explicitly stated

The Hobrecht plan for Berlin, drafted in 1862, divided the city's expansion zone into fourteen sections. Critics noted that the plan fixed street widths but said nothing about building heights, a gap that let developers raise five-story tenements along the widest avenues. According to the passage, the Hobrecht plan set which of the following?

  1. Population density
  2. Street widths Correct answer.
  3. Tenement rents
  4. Building heights

Explanation

The passage draws an explicit contrast between what the plan fixed and what it left unaddressed, naming street widths as the thing it did specify. The other quantities are simply not attributed to the plan.

Question 22Information that is explicitly stated

Coral bleaching occurs when heat stress drives corals to expel the algae living in their tissues. Because those algae supply most of the coral's color and much of its energy, a bleached colony turns white and, if the stress persists, starves. According to the passage, why does a bleached colony appear white?

  1. It has expelled its algae. Correct answer.
  2. Bacteria infect its tissue.
  3. It stops building a skeleton.
  4. Sunlight fades its skeleton.

Explanation

The passage states a causal chain in which the algae provide most of the coral's color, so their loss produces the white appearance. The correct answer restates that stated cause directly.

Question 23Information that is explicitly stated

Unlike the Roman roads of the same era, which were built by legions and financed from the treasury, the Inca road system was maintained by local communities through labor tribute. The Inca state set the routes; villagers supplied the upkeep. According to the passage, who supplied the upkeep of the Inca roads?

  1. Roman legions
  2. The Inca state
  3. The treasury
  4. Local communities Correct answer.

Explanation

The passage assigns distinct roles to the state and to villagers, reserving upkeep for the latter. The correct answer simply matches the stated role to the actor.

Question 24Information that is explicitly stated

Chemist Rosalind Franklin's photographs of DNA were made using X-ray crystallography. She did not, as is sometimes claimed, produce them as illustrations for a colleague's lecture; her notebook entries show she was testing whether the molecule's phosphate groups lay on the inside or the outside of its backbone. According to the passage, Franklin made her DNA photographs in order to do what?

  1. Test a structural hypothesis Correct answer.
  2. Confirm a rival's model
  3. Illustrate a colleague's lecture
  4. Measure the molecule's weight

Explanation

The passage explicitly corrects a common claim about Franklin's purpose and substitutes the notebook evidence, which describes a test of where phosphate groups lie. The correct answer paraphrases that stated purpose.

Question 25Information that is explicitly stated

In 1953 the sugar beet industry in California's Imperial Valley collapsed after a virus spread by the beet leafhopper destroyed most of the crop. Growers abandoned beets and planted alfalfa, and within five years the leafhopper's numbers had fallen sharply, because the insect did poorly on alfalfa. According to the passage, the drop in leafhopper numbers followed what change?

  1. An increase in beet acreage
  2. A decline in irrigation water
  3. A shift to planting alfalfa Correct answer.
  4. The arrival of a new virus

Explanation

The passage presents a sequence in which growers switch crops and the insect population then declines because the new crop suits it poorly. The stated trigger is therefore the change of crop.

Question 26Information that is explicitly stated

The Tashkent–Samarkand rail line, completed in 1899, cut a journey of eleven days by camel to roughly fourteen hours by train. Freight rates fell by about two-thirds within a decade, though passenger fares stayed high enough that most travelers still walked. Which of the following figures does the passage provide?

  1. Cost of building the line
  2. Duration of the camel trip Correct answer.
  3. Length of the line in miles
  4. Number of weekly trains

Explanation

Detail questions about numbers require checking which quantities are actually quantified in the text. The passage gives the camel journey as eleven days, along with the train time and the drop in freight rates.

Question 27Information that is explicitly stated

Most histories credit James Watt with the separate condenser, but Watt himself described the idea as occurring to him during a walk on Glasgow Green. His patent of 1769 covered the condenser, not the crank, which another inventor had already patented. According to the passage, what did Watt's 1769 patent cover?

  1. The condenser Correct answer.
  2. The crank
  3. The walking beam
  4. The flyball governor

Explanation

The passage explicitly limits the patent's scope, naming one device as covered and another as excluded. The correct answer repeats the covered device.

Question 28Information that is explicitly stated

Prairie voles form lasting pair bonds and share nest-building duties, whereas montane voles are solitary and promiscuous. Researchers found the difference correlates with how densely each species' brain expresses a receptor for vasopressin, not with the size of the animals' territories. According to the passage, the behavioral difference between the species correlates with what?

  1. The size of their territories
  2. The length of their lives
  3. The type of food they eat
  4. Receptor density in the brain Correct answer.

Explanation

The passage pairs a stated correlation with an explicit denial of an alternative, so the answer must be the factor affirmed rather than the one ruled out. Receptor expression is the affirmed factor.

Question 29Information that is explicitly stated

In economics, "menu costs" are not the expense of printing bills of fare. The term names the costs a firm bears when it changes its own prices: reprinting catalogs, alerting distributors, and losing customers who notice the increase. According to the passage, menu costs include which of the following?

  1. Reprinting catalogs Correct answer.
  2. Printing restaurant menus
  3. Hiring new managers
  4. Building new factories

Explanation

The passage defines the term by a list of concrete examples after denying the literal reading. The answer must be drawn from that list rather than from the ordinary meaning of the word.

Question 30Information that is explicitly stated

Antarctic hair grass is one of only two flowering plants native to the continent. Although it can survive brief thaws, it grows only where snow cover shields it from wind, and it reproduces mainly by cloning rather than by seed. According to the passage, where does Antarctic hair grass grow?

  1. In coastal salt marshes
  2. On wind-exposed ridges
  3. In shallow freshwater pools
  4. Where snow shields it from wind Correct answer.

Explanation

The passage states a limiting condition on the plant's location as well as a fact about its reproduction. The answer must reflect the stated condition rather than a plausible-sounding habitat.

Question 31Information that is explicitly stated

The Antikythera mechanism's bronze gears were cut with triangular teeth, a design that distributes wear more evenly than the square teeth of later European clocks. Scholars infer the design was deliberate because the same tooth profile appears on every gear in the device. According to the passage, what leads scholars to infer deliberate design?

  1. A tooth shape repeated throughout Correct answer.
  2. Instructions written in Greek
  3. Traces of an ancient repair
  4. The device's very small size

Explanation

The passage names one specific observation as the basis for the inference about intention. That observation concerns consistency of gear shape across the device.

Question 32Information that is explicitly stated

Early maps of the ocean floor were compiled from lead-line soundings, in which a weighted rope was lowered until it touched bottom. Because a ship had to stop for every cast, the resulting charts showed sparse, widely spaced points. According to the passage, why were early ocean-floor charts sparse?

  1. Ships stopped for each cast Correct answer.
  2. Sailors refused to take readings
  3. Compasses failed near the poles
  4. The ropes were too short

Explanation

The passage gives an explicit because-clause linking the method's slowness to the sparseness of the charts. The answer must reproduce that stated cause.

Question 33Information that is explicitly stated

The Greenland ice sheet loses mass both by melting at its surface and by calving icebergs at its edges. Scientists distinguish these processes by tracking where the water ends up: surface melt runs off across the ice, while calving delivers ice straight into the sea. According to the passage, how does calving differ from surface melting?

  1. It happens only in winter
  2. It delivers ice into the sea Correct answer.
  3. It requires warmer air
  4. It adds nothing to sea level

Explanation

The passage contrasts the two processes by their endpoints, not by their seasonality or their effect on sea level. The distinguishing feature stated is where the material goes.

Question 34Information that is explicitly stated

A seed bank can keep a species for centuries only if its seeds tolerate drying and freezing. Species with recalcitrant seeds, which die when dehydrated, must instead be held as living plants in field collections, exposed to pests and weather. According to the passage, what is required for long-term seed-bank storage?

  1. Living field collections
  2. Rapid germination in spring
  3. Tolerance of drying and freezing Correct answer.
  4. Resistance to insects and weather

Explanation

The passage states a necessary condition for storage in a seed bank, then describes the alternative for species that fail it. The answer must be the stated condition, not the fallback method.

Question 35Information that is explicitly stated

The 1833 Factory Act banned the employment of children under nine in textile mills and limited those aged nine to thirteen to nine hours a day. Enforcement relied on four paid inspectors, who together covered the whole kingdom. According to the passage, what limit did the act place on children aged nine to thirteen?

  1. A total ban on mill work
  2. Four hours a day
  3. Nine hours a day Correct answer.
  4. Twelve hours a day

Explanation

Questions pairing an age band with a rule require matching the stated limit to the stated group. The passage attaches nine hours to the nine-to-thirteen band and the ban to children under nine.

Question 36Information that is explicitly stated

Unlike the Norse settlements in Greenland, which vanished by the fifteenth century, Inuit communities on the same island persisted. Archaeologists attribute the difference partly to diet: the Norse relied on livestock that needed fragile pasture, while the Inuit hunted marine mammals available year-round. According to the passage, the Inuit persistence is attributed partly to what?

  1. Dependence on fragile pasture
  2. A diet of marine mammals Correct answer.
  3. Trade with Norse settlers
  4. Cultivation of hardy grains

Explanation

The passage assigns contrasting diets to the two groups and links survival to the Inuit diet. The answer must be the diet attributed to the Inuit rather than to the Norse.

Question 37Information that is explicitly stated

Traditional indigo dyeing requires repeated dips: cloth is soaked in a reduced dye bath, lifted into the air so the dye oxidizes to blue, then soaked again. A single dip yields only a pale blue, so deep shades demand many repetitions. According to the passage, what turns the dye blue?

  1. Repeated soaking in the bath
  2. Rinsing in cold water
  3. Heating the dye bath
  4. Exposure to air Correct answer.

Explanation

The passage names a specific step in the cycle as the one at which oxidation to blue occurs. The answer must reproduce that step rather than a step that merely affects shade.

Question 38Information that is explicitly stated

The library's special collections may be consulted only in the reading room. Readers must register at the desk, present photo identification, and leave coats and bags in the lockers provided; pencils are supplied because ink is not permitted near manuscripts. According to the passage, what does the library supply to readers?

  1. Photocopies of manuscripts
  2. Lockers for coats only
  3. Photo identification
  4. Writing implements Correct answer.

Explanation

The passage distinguishes what readers must bring from what the library furnishes. Pencils are the item explicitly described as supplied, and the answer uses a general term for them.

Question 39Information or ideas that can be inferred

Passage: "The term 'vernacular architecture' is often taken to mean buildings constructed without formally trained architects. On that usage, a farmhouse raised by its own occupants belongs to the category, while a bank branch designed by a licensed firm does not. But the farmhouse's builders may have copied a pattern book, and the bank's designer may have adapted local materials and methods." Which one of the following can be inferred from the passage?

  1. Pattern books circulating in rural areas were the principal source of design for most of the farmhouses built there.
  2. Licensed architects rarely adapt local materials and methods.
  3. Farmhouses are never examples of vernacular architecture.
  4. Whether a building counts as vernacular may depend on factors other than who designed it. Correct answer.

Explanation

The passage undercuts the design-by-whom criterion by noting that untrained builders may rely on borrowed designs while trained architects may work in locally rooted ways. That undercutting implies the category's boundary cannot rest on the designer's credentials alone.

Question 40Information or ideas that can be inferred

Passage: "Historians of the period have generally treated the guild records as transparent windows onto wages and prices. The records do report sums paid, but they report them in a vocabulary of customary obligations, and the sums were often settled in kind, in labor, or in exemptions from other dues." Which one of the following best describes the author's attitude toward the historians' use of the guild records?

  1. Convinced that wages and prices in the period cannot be studied at all.
  2. Cautiously critical of the confidence with which historians read the records. Correct answer.
  3. Chiefly concerned with defending the accuracy of the guild records against criticism.
  4. Fully persuaded that the guild records are the best source available for the study of wages and prices.

Explanation

The author grants that the records report payments but stresses that the payments take forms the historians' reading glosses over. That combination of partial concession with a pointed reservation signals qualified criticism rather than rejection or endorsement.

Question 41Information or ideas that can be inferred

Passage: "When the city replaced its diesel buses with electric models, ridership rose by a fifth within two years. Transit officials credited the quieter, cleaner ride. Yet the new buses also ran on a redesigned network that added six crosstown routes, and the fare increase scheduled for that year was postponed." Which one of the following is most strongly supported by the passage?

  1. The officials based their explanation on a misreading of the ridership figures.
  2. The officials' explanation is the only plausible account of the increase.
  3. The officials' explanation may be incomplete. Correct answer.
  4. The officials' explanation is incompatible with the ridership data.

Explanation

The passage supplies two concurrent changes that could independently have raised ridership, alongside the one the officials cite. Mentioning those alternatives implies that the officials' account may leave out contributing causes without showing it to be false.

Question 42Information or ideas that can be inferred

Passage: "The claim that bilingual education delays children's acquisition of the majority language has been tested mainly in settings where the majority language is not spoken outside school. In communities where children hear the majority language constantly, the same programs have produced no measurable delay." Which one of the following is most strongly supported by the passage?

  1. The claim holds only for children who never hear the majority language outside school before beginning formal instruction.
  2. The claim is limited in its applicability to particular linguistic environments. Correct answer.
  3. The claim has been refuted by every study of bilingual programs conducted so far.
  4. The claim applies to all bilingual programs regardless of the setting.

Explanation

The passage contrasts two kinds of setting and reports the alleged delay in one but not the other, which places a boundary on where the claim holds. The inference is that applicability depends on the surrounding linguistic environment.

Question 43Information or ideas that can be inferred

Passage: "The report notes that the region's aquifers recharge slowly, on the order of centuries, and concludes that current withdrawals cannot be sustained. It then recommends expanded use of surface water-without remarking that the region's rivers are themselves fed largely by discharge from those same aquifers." Which one of the following is most strongly suggested by the passage?

  1. The recommendation rests on data the report elsewhere repudiates.
  2. The recommendation is unnecessary given the state of the region's water supply.
  3. The recommendation is vulnerable to an objection the report does not address. Correct answer.
  4. The recommendation is fully consistent with the report's own findings about how quickly the region's aquifers refill.

Explanation

The report treats surface water as an alternative to the overdrawn aquifers, yet the passage indicates that the two sources are hydrologically connected. Because that connection goes unacknowledged, the proposal is exposed to an unaddressed objection.

Question 44Information or ideas that can be inferred

Passage: "Critics of the museum's new admission fee argue that attendance has fallen by a third since it was introduced. The museum replies that attendance always falls in the first year of a fee and recovers thereafter, citing its own experience in 1998." The museum's reply depends on assuming that

  1. the fee introduced in 1998 was set at exactly the same level, in real terms, as the fee now being proposed
  2. attendance is in general the best measure of a museum's success
  3. critics of the admission fee are not themselves regular visitors to the museum
  4. the circumstances surrounding the earlier fee are relevantly similar to those surrounding the present one Correct answer.

Explanation

The reply reasons from a past episode to the present one, and such an inference is sound only if the two situations share the features that produced the earlier pattern. Similarity of relevant circumstances is therefore the unstated link the argument requires.

Question 45Information or ideas that can be inferred

Passage: "Advocates of open-source development often claim that many eyes make bugs shallow. The claim has merit for defects that are visible to casual inspection. Security flaws, however, are frequently invisible until someone looks specifically for them, and looking specifically is what an adversary does." Which one of the following is most strongly supported by the passage?

  1. The 'many eyes' argument has been conclusively shown to be false for every category of software defect yet examined.
  2. The 'many eyes' argument offers less protection against deliberately hidden flaws than against ordinary ones. Correct answer.
  3. The 'many eyes' argument applies with special force to security flaws.
  4. The 'many eyes' argument was formulated without any knowledge of software defects.

Explanation

The passage concedes the argument's value for defects anyone might notice, then notes that security flaws are found by targeted searching rather than casual viewing. The implied contrast is that the argument's protective force varies with the kind of defect.

Question 46Information or ideas that can be inferred

Passage: "Economists studying colonial trade have noted that shipping registers record a vessel's declared port of origin rather than the port at which its cargo was actually loaded. A ship registered in Bristol might therefore appear in the records as carrying West Indian sugar even though it took on that sugar in Lisbon." The example of the Bristol ship is presented in order to

  1. establish that colonial shipping companies routinely falsified the port of origin recorded in their registers
  2. illustrate how a category in the records can mislead about actual cargo routes Correct answer.
  3. explain why shipping registers were compiled by colonial authorities in the first place
  4. show that Lisbon handled more sugar in the colonial period than Bristol did

Explanation

The hypothetical ship is offered to make concrete the gap between what the register records and where goods were actually taken on. Its function is illustrative: it shows how a recorded category can diverge from the underlying reality.

Question 47Information or ideas that can be inferred

Passage: "For decades scholars assumed that the mosaics in the north transept were later additions, since their style resembles work of the twelfth century. Recent analysis of the mortar, however, places the mosaics in the same building campaign as the nave, which is securely dated to the sixth century." Which one of the following is most strongly suggested by the passage?

  1. The style of the mosaics was imitated by twelfth-century artisans working from sixth-century models that they had studied closely.
  2. The style of the mosaics differs sharply from anything produced by artists of the twelfth century.
  3. The style of the mosaics resembles work made long after the mosaics themselves were produced. Correct answer.
  4. The style of the mosaics was produced by craftsmen trained in a later era.

Explanation

If the mosaics are sixth-century but look like twelfth-century work, then stylistic resemblance does not track chronology in the way the earlier scholars supposed. The passage implies that similar styles can appear centuries apart.

Question 48Information or ideas that can be inferred

Passage: "Professor Hale argues that the novel's narrator is unreliable because he contradicts himself about the date of his mother's death. But narrators in autobiographical fiction commonly misstate dates, and readers of this novel have never treated such slips as evidence of unreliability in the narrator's account of events." The author would be most likely to respond to Hale's argument by

  1. demonstrating by reference to the manuscript that the date Hale cites is in fact recorded correctly there
  2. arguing that autobiographical fiction, because of its hybrid nature, cannot be evaluated by the standards applied to other kinds of novel
  3. denying that the narrator ever contradicts himself about the date of his mother's death
  4. noting that the inconsistency Hale cites is common and rarely taken as a sign of unreliability Correct answer.

Explanation

The author's two sentences both work to deflate the cited inconsistency: one treats such slips as a familiar feature of the genre, the other as something readers have not regarded as decisive. The natural continuation is to press that point against Hale.

Question 49Information or ideas that can be inferred

Passage: "The vaccine's trial showed a reduction in severe cases that was large and statistically robust; the reduction in mild cases was smaller and fell within the range that chance alone might produce. The trial was not designed to detect transmission effects, and none were observed." Which one of the following is most strongly supported by the passage?

  1. The vaccine prevents transmission of the disease from vaccinated to unvaccinated people.
  2. Mild cases of the disease are not clinically important.
  3. The design of the trial was in general inadequate for evaluating the vaccine's effectiveness against the disease as it occurs in the broader population.
  4. Evidence that the vaccine reduces severe illness is stronger than evidence that it reduces mild illness. Correct answer.

Explanation

The passage describes one result as large and statistically robust and the other as falling within the range chance could produce. That difference in evidential strength is exactly what the comparison of the two findings supports.

Question 50Information or ideas that can be inferred

Passage: "Some linguists hold that the sound changes reconstructed for proto-Italic spread from a single prestigious center outward. But the changes appear in different orders in different regions, and in one region a change appears to have run its course before the center adopted it." Which aspect of the linguists' view does the evidence described most directly undermine?

  1. That prestigious centers existed in the proto-Italic world
  2. That the changes originated at the center and spread outward Correct answer.
  3. That regions differed from one another in the speech patterns they exhibited
  4. That sound changes occurred in proto-Italic at all

Explanation

The cited evidence concerns the order in which changes occurred and shows a periphery preceding the center, which contradicts the direction of the proposed diffusion. The target of the objection is therefore the claim about origin and outward spread.